I would say that the reason the
legend on your coin was
engraved upside down was that the
type is basically just a large rectangle, which looks pretty much the same upside down as right
side up. So it was easy for the engraver to confuse the top of the
type with the bottom when it came to adding the
legend.
Another example of the same error for the same reason: the
CONSECRATIO denarius of
Diva Faustina II with
Altar reverse shown below, which I described as follows in Gemini XI, 12 Jan. 2014, lot 452:
Obv:
DIVA FAV - STINA
PIA Bust draped right. Rx: CONSECRA - TIO, beginning at 2 o'clock and ending at 10 o'clock;
Altar enclosure with base, central door, and volutes left and right on top. The
reverse legend was meant to start at 8 o'clock and end at 4 o'clock, but the engraver confused the top and bottom of the
altar and
engraved the
legend upside down. If the
reverse is turned as in the picture below so that the
legend is correctly aligned, then the
altar is upside down.
Legend error of BM 725,
Cohen 75, and
RIC 746. Possibly unpublished, though C. Clay knows another example of this error, from the same
reverse die, in a private
collection.
However, I don't think that these mistakes reliably suggest different engravers for the legends than for the
types! It would be just as understandable if one and the same engraver
engraved the
type, then got its orientation wrong when he undertook to add the
legend.
I regard it as certain that, in general,
types were
engraved before legends, because the letters of the legends often leave spaces for elements of the
types, which therefore must already have been there when the legends were added. It is most unlikely that engravers were instructed to engrave the
legend first, leaving spaces for elements of the
types which could be anticipated to interrupt the
legend near the edge of the design, rather than the opposite procedure,
types first, legends where they fit, which was so much easier, and would lead to so many fewer type-legend conflicts and misfits. This point was convincingly argued by Hans-Markus
von Kaenel in
his monograph on the coinage of
Claudius I.
Were there different engravers for
types and legends? Perhaps deductions can be drawn from the titles of the personnel named in the Trajanic
mint inscriptions, concerning which I recently read an interesting analysis, but I can't remember where. It might also be relevant if we know from surviving documentation whether early modern mints employed the same or different engravers for
types and legends.
